


The One Where Hannibal is a Cat

by coloredink



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Fluff, Hannibal is Hannibal, Other, Someone Help Will Graham, This Is STUPID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Specifically, he's Alana's cat.  And Graham is Jack's dog.  They meet.</p><p>That's it.  That's the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Hannibal is a Cat

“Thank you so much,” Jack said. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s no problem,” Alana reassured him for what felt like the hundredth time. “I love dogs. We’ll get along great. He’ll be fine.”

Jack left, and then it was just Alana and Graham. And Hannibal, somewhere in the house, but right now it was just her and the large, curly-haired mutt of indeterminate color. Mostly brown. Graham stared at the door where Jack had just gone, leaving him in this strange house with this strange woman who was holding his leash. He looked up at Alana with large, confused eyes.

“He’ll be back,” she told him. “He just has to go on a little business trip. A few days at most.” She unclipped Graham’s leash so that he could wander around the house. Graham remained sitting by the door.

Jack had dropped off a large dog bed (similar to a giant bean bag chair), a gallon-sized ziplock bag of kibble, and a canvas tote bag of toys. Alana dragged the bed to what seemed to be an appropriate location in the living room and deposited the sack of toys next to it. She hung Graham’s leash on a hook by the door, alongside her scarves and jackets. Graham, still by the door, gave her a reproachful look over his shoulder.

“I can’t make him come back,” she told him.

Graham sighed and lay down in front of the door, head on his paws.

Alana put Graham’s dishes on the floor, poured water in one, and kibble in the other. Jack had told her that Graham was a free feeder who didn’t overeat. Graham’s ears moved when he heard the kibble being poured into his dish, but he remained planted in front of the door. Alana looked up to see an elegant cat perched on the second floor railing, his long tail curled neatly around his paws.

“Be nice, Hannibal,” Alana warned him. “He’s a guest.”

She waited a moment, to see if anything else would happen, but Hannibal merely disappeared.

\-----

Alana called Hannibal “challenging.” Everyone else called him “an unholy terror” or “that goddamn cat.”

She’d found him as a half-starved kitten near her office in Baltimore. They’d told her that he would likely die, but she persevered, staying up nights to hand-feed him and paying vet bill after vet bill to treat his numerous parasites and infections. He lived and grew into a beautiful creature, with yellow-green eyes, a magnificent blue coat, and a noble, triangular face. Alana spoiled him with a raw diet, a three-story cat tree in her home office, cat perches in every window, and frequent applications of goat milk and catnip. Hannibal repaid her with multiple lacerations on her hands and feet, pee on all her rugs, and several broken cups and one broken vase.

Her friends refused to visit unless Hannibal was shut in the bathroom. (There wasn’t anything he could destroy in the bathroom; the one time she’d shut him in the bedroom she’d let him out to discover ruined drapes and cat piss all over the comforter.) She’d gone through two cat sitters and one veterinarian.

In desperation, she consulted a number of cat behaviorists and cat psychiatrists. 

One recommended that she enrich her cat’s environment with more toys and perches (hence the cat tower and the perches scattered throughout the home). Hannibal seemed to enjoy them, but he still left a three-inch gash in her then-boyfriend’s calf. The boyfriend broke up with her the next week.

Another recommended medication. Hannibal rejected his pills, hid his pills, and finally began vomiting in protest against his pills. He also clawed the shit out of Alana. She gave up.

A third suggested that she declaw the cat. Alana fired him.

And yet, Alana was the one to ask several times, “Are you sure Graham’s okay with cats?”

“He wouldn’t hurt a ham sandwich,” Jack reassured her. “He’s not the one I’m worried about.”

\----

Graham was licking again.

He was, at least, no longer in front of the door. Alana had gone into her home office to do some work, and Graham had followed her. He’d smelled everything within reach, paying special attention to the cat tower, before settling down to lick his paws. Since then, Alana had watched him gnaw his back leg, scratch his own belly until it turned pink, and go back to licking his paw.

She was quite certain he did not have fleas or ticks. It could be a skin allergy, though Jack hadn’t mentioned it and Graham didn’t have any unpleasant odor aside from the usual dog smell. It was probably anxiety; Jack had brought Graham home from the shelter just a few weeks ago, from all accounts he’d had an unstable life, and now here he was in yet another new place with a new human. Whatever it was, he couldn’t be allowed to pull his own fur out, so Alana got up and went out to the living room to retrieve a couple of Graham’s chew toys and his bag of treats.

When she got back, Hannibal was in the office.

Alana held her breath. Hannibal was sitting a few feet away from Graham, his tail curled around his paws. Graham appeared to be more interested in grooming his foot than paying attention to the cat. Hannibal watched this with rapt attention for a few minutes before finally walking over to Graham and cuffing him on the nose with a curled paw.

Graham blinked, more startled than anything else; Hannibal, for once, hadn’t had his claws out. Hannibal streaked his way up one of the bookshelves and hopped from there onto the top of his cat tower, where he peered down at Graham from above like a creepy gray gargoyle. Graham didn’t even get up, simply blinking at the cat and Alana and the world at large as if he didn’t know where he was, or how he’d gotten there, or why his snout smarted.

Alana wiggled one of Graham’s toys in front of his nose, a textured ring that already showed some signs of wear. Graham licked the toy, then took it delicately in his teeth and began to chew.

She looked up. Hannibal stared back at her.

“Thanks?” Alana said. “I guess.”

She went back to work, now to the background noise of Graham’s gnawing. When she looked up again, Hannibal was gone, and Graham appeared to be asleep.

\-----

Beginning around six o’clock, Hannibal came into whatever room Alana happened to be in at the time and stared at her. This was his way of letting her know that it was time to feed him. Alana did not usually feed him until closer to seven, so this unnerving state of affairs would continue for some time. If eight o’clock approached and Hannibal still had not been fed, he would start to destroy the house, room by room.

As soon as Alana got up from her chair, Hannibal leapt down from his perch and dashed ahead of her to the kitchen, where she found him waiting on the counter, where he was ostensibly not allowed. He flowed down to the floor and twined around her ankles, meowing in a sweet, high-pitched voice, the only time of day where he was demonstrably affectionate. Graham, trotting in behind Alana, went straight to his own dish and began crunching kibble. Alana got the container of Rad Cat Raw Diet out of the fridge and scooped out a third of a cup into Hannibal’s dish. She nuked it in the microwave for a few seconds, just to get it to room temperature, and, mindful that there was a strange animal in the house that would no doubt hoover up Hannibal’s delicious-smelling food given the chance, decided that Hannibal could eat on the counter.

“C’mere, Hanni,” she said, patting the counter next to the dish. “You can eat up here.”

Normally, Hannibal began eating his food immediately, in dainty bites, pausing every so often to wash and tidy his whiskers before proceeding. Today, Hannibal sniffed his food, stuck his paw in it, and then...batted the dish off the counter entirely.

“ _Hannibal!_ ” Alana shrieked. The dish was sturdy and didn’t shatter, miraculously, but the very expensive, human-grade, organic and all-pastured ground lamb shoulder and heart formula went all over the floor. Graham gulped it down in two bites and wagged his tail for more.

Hannibal _purred_. Graham panted up at the cat adoringly.

Alana stared. “Oh my God, you two are insane.”

\-----

After dinner--Hannibal ate his second serving, thank God, otherwise Alana wasn’t sure what she would have done--Hannibal spent several minutes grooming himself fastidiously before setting off for house unknown. Graham followed him, having evidently decided that the cat was the source of more magical non-kibble food. Alana, after several worried minutes wondering what it said about her state of mind that she was considering following her pets around the house, went back to her office.

A few minutes later, Graham barked.

It was a single, short bark, not terribly loud. It was not preceded or followed by any other noise: no splintering glass, no indignant yowl, no growling or whimpering. Alana listened for further commotion, a leaden ball of dread forming in her stomach, but none commenced. She went back to reading a journal article about adaptation in adverse social ecologies.

Graham barked again: another single, short bark surrounded by silence. This time, Alana listened only briefly before going back to the article.

Hannibal came trotting in, tail high. Graham followed just a few feet behind and lay down under the cat tower, where he’d been earlier. He picked up one of his toys and began chewing it in an absentminded fashion. Hannibal leapt onto one of the bookshelves and began nuzzling the books as if he had a very itchy jaw that needed immediate attention.

“Hannibal,” Alana said in a warning tone.

His ears flicked backward at the mention of his name, but he otherwise gave no sign of having heard her. Alana sighed and went back to her reading, listening for the thumps that were sure to follow.

Alana had a bevy of cat toys. Catnip mice, treat balls, feathers on wands, wind-up mice, laser pointers: if Petco stocked it, she had it. Vigorous exercise, in the form of play, had been recommended by several behaviorists, the Internet, and Jackson Galaxy on _My Cat From Hell_ as something that would reduce Hannibal’s aggressive behavior and make him more even-tempered.

Hannibal played with the toys--at first. He pounced on them when she brought them home and batted them around with every evidence of feline ecstasy, and for a moment Alana’s spirits would lift, certain that now, at last, she would have a normal cat. But alas, this joy was short-lived, as Hannibal inevitably got bored and left the toy in the middle of the hallway. Often this was followed by a foreboding crash, because the only play Hannibal never got tired of was breaking things.

Alana no longer kept flowers in vases (Hannibal had a tendency to eat them anyway, and Alana was terrified he’d poison himself), standing picture frames, or ceramic tchotchkes of any kind. She installed child/earthquake-proof latches on all her cabinets after coming home one day to discover every single wine glass she owned on the floor. She’d taken to drinking out of plastic tumblers, on the off-chance that she would forget and leave her unfinished cup on a counter or end table, where Hannibal would inevitably find it and hurl it to the floor, peering over the edge afterward with a curious satisfaction.

Books were, all things considered, fairly harmless. They didn’t break, they didn’t stain, and they were easy to reshelve. Some of them had teeth and claw marks in them where Hannibal had made his whims known already, but that was easily overlooked. More to the point, it kept Hannibal amused and, therefore, from getting into further, more destructive and expensive mischief.

Graham barked. It was the same bark Alana had heard before. Graham did it again, and this time Alana did look up, in time to see Hannibal flatten his ears and draw his paw away from the books. Graham put his head back down. When Hannibal started fidgeting with a book, all Graham had to do was whine, and Hannibal’s paw retreated.

Alana watched this happen several times, until finally Hannibal leapt down from the shelf and, to Alana’s alarm, went straight for Graham. She rose from her chair, wishing she had water or something to throw on the animals, but Graham simply rolled over and let Hannibal club him about the face with curled paws. When Hannibal deemed Graham to have suffered sufficient abuse, he climbed off and groomed himself angrily, and stalked from the room in a grandiose fashion.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Alana muttered, and sat back down.

\-----

Hannibal was in Graham’s bed.

The dog had been easy-going so far, but he clearly did not like the cat in his bed. He paced around the bed. He barked at the bed. He whined at the bed. He looked up imploringly at Alana. Hannibal remained curled in the center of the bed with a vaguely aggrieved demeanor, as if to say, _why are you making all this noise?_

Alana shook her head. “You figure it out.”

Graham placed a paw up on the bean bag. Hannibal yawned and stretched, flexing his claws. Graham sat back down on the floor. 

When Alana checked on the animals one last time, Graham was curled up on the floor next to his occupied dog bed, looking very despondent indeed. Hannibal was a round gray ball. Alana shrugged and went upstairs.

Alana usually closed her bedroom door when she went to bed--Hannibal had a tendency to wake her up in the wee hours of the morning with his claws if she didn't--but that night she left her door open, in case Graham needed anything. She had strange, anxious dreams about Hannibal and Graham and a river, where in the end Hannibal turned into a tiger and devoured Graham except for a single fuzzy ear. She woke to morning light streaming in through the window and onto her pillow.

Hannibal would usually be meowing at the door by now, demanding his breakfast, or knocking things over downstairs. Alana got up and padded down the stairs.

Graham and Hannibal were curled in the dog bed together. Hannibal had both paws around Graham's head and was grooming him, his long pink tongue smoothing over the curly brown fur, over and over again. Graham's eyes were half-closed.

"Goddamn, if only I had my phone," Alana sighed; she was sure that if she went and got it, the spell would break.

Sure enough, in the very next moment, Hannibal leapt from the bed and up onto the counter, meowing as if he'd never been fed, might never see food again, and Alana were torturing him. Alana sighed and got out the Rad Cat. She scooped the food into his dish, nuked it, and set it on the counter. Hannibal sniffed it and batted it onto the floor for the waiting Graham, who licked it all up and grinned at them for more, tongue lolling.

"You're the worst," she told the cat. Hannibal just squinted his eyes and purred.

\---end---

**Author's Note:**

> [coloredink.tumblr.com](http://coloredink.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [sumiwrites.wordpress.com](https://sumiwrites.wordpress.com/) (if you wanna see the books I've written)


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